It's a Good News Bad News Thing
The week that was
Greetings and happy Friday to those who celebrate.
Lots of great things have happened these past 30 days.
For example:
My once proud but seriously deflated college basketball program hired a coach who is part Energizer bunny, part social media-savvy cheerleader, part serious X’s/O’s strategist, and (importantly) young enough to truly understand that college sports are now a Business, meant to be run like one. I’m pretty stoked about Pat Kelsey. I’m hoping to meet him someday and tell him that he’s the real* breath of fresh air Louisville basketball needed, but even if I don’t, I’m all about the effort and energy he’s already putting into hiring coaches and putting my team back together again.
*My dude thought that his new office was the lobby. Epic.
I will demur and avoid negative comments about The Rival Down the Road’s new coaching hire, who is a former player. Enough said about how that sort of a hire worked out for us.
Hubs and I put our money where our mouths are and are now Louisville football season ticket holders. Yes, it means 6 weekends in the fall we’re on the road, but we decided that it means enough to us that we wanted to take the step, which required donating to the whole “college sports is a Business now” thing. But I’m okay with that.
I’ll be a this….can’t wait. And we’ll see you, Cards fans, with some Angel’s Envy in hand in late August…
The pollen has calmed. Finally. Poor hubs and one of my doggos suffered for a solid two weeks but the worst, it seems, has passed.
Proud mama update (skip, if this sort of thing annoys you): My oldest is buying his first house in Boston this month. My youngest is exactly (today) one month from graduating from Purdue Vet School, and moving back to her beloved Michigan for her first job. My west coast-living middle kid traveled this direction and we got to spend a wonderful day with her in Asheville. We’re looking forward to our May week in Seattle that the kids planned for us, to celebrate the Hubs’ 60th this year.
I got some amaze-ball level news about a collaboration I sought out for a rom com based in Louisville that I’m writing. I will announce more about this later…(it’s way cool. though….squeee!)
Reviews for Cul-de-Sac, the domestic suspense novel releasing June 11 are coming in solid to glowing. That’s pretty cool. I’m hoping to nail down a bookstore event here in Greenville this summer. It requires me to Go Out And Get such a thing which I have been doing which is both an exercise in people-ing and but also a great way to make new local friends. I’ve already got a book club meeting scheduled with a local group in June so I might be crutching/walker-ing my way in there post hip surgery, but Go Me!
I am anticipating something kind of exciting-slash life changing even happening for me next week as well, but more on this later.
In the midst of this, I opened up twitter while eating lunch yesterday, as one does, and the first thing I saw was a tweet (Xeet, whatever) from Sara, one of my Louisiville peeps, saying we had lost one of our own, one of our flock, one of our firmest Louisville advocates and a beloved member of the Cardinal fan family. After scrolling a bit more to determine that this had, indeed, happened, I dove in with my own story, recalling that I’d finally gotten to meet him in person at a tailgate last year.
Now, about 24 hours later, it still hurts. And it’s made me think a lot more about how, despite all the actual evil that social media has actually wrought, it has also created friend groups that feel like family. Nothing binds you as a fan base like the trauma that was the last 2 coaching situations for our basketball team. Nothing binds you as a fan base like the glory of having a beloved former player, longtime community member, and successful football coach back amongst us, doing what he does for our football program. Nothing binds you like collectively boo/hissing a player who left one of our teams to join another one (fine) but was a real bitch about it the whole time (not fine). Nothing binds you as a fanbase of a school with a Basketball Soul as you watch the NCAA Madness, both women’s and men’s, and make comments all the way through the games together, even if your team is not included (this shall the the last of that nonsense, Pat willing)
Between t-shirts, Indi’s commemorative meals, friendship bracelets, and the hope that our own little fireball coach will open a presser with “We watching or nah,” which was our friend’s consistent tweet for the last two years when he’d retweet the scheduled basketball game, it’s clear that he will be missed, a lot.
I always knew that OyyyeeeCorito86 was a real person, not a bot hiding behind a bunch of numbers. He was actually one of the folks who’d chime in with a positive message for me when I’d start trauma-tweeting about the choice that I’ve made to try and be a successful author. He was positive but realistic about all the teams we followed wearing the Cardinal red and black. And he was always positive about our fandom, about us as a twitter family of fans, and about University of Louisville Cardinals, regardless of the sport being played.
Yes, Jacori, we will be watching. And I know you will be too, tipping back in a chair on the front porch of God’s Big Red House, sharing an Indi’s 18 piece with Coach Crum.
Hey—-Hug your family. Say “hey” and “How are you?” to your friends in person and on line. Life is short. Find the positives.
Go Cards.
xoxo
Liz
No audio reviews today. Check back next week.